In the Willow Shade
by Yuki Scorpio
Summary: A side story to "A Dance with the Chrysanthemum".


Yagyuu knocked and let himself in. There was a distinct scent to the office, a mix of books, ink, incense, and wood, smells that he always associated with his half brother. It was weird, when he thought about it, how Renji always smelled this way. The room they shared - the tiny space Renji shared with him without a second thought since the day their father brought him home - was always like this, too.

Home was a little run down shack of a house. They weren't too poor, but were also far from being well-off. It was a weird space where three adults - Hiroshi always saw Renji as a man, although he was barely a teenager when they first met - and a child lived. Yanagi's mother was a kind woman, or as kind as a woman could be towards a child another woman had conceived with her husband. Yagyuu respected her and never asked why she always seemed a bit spaced out.

Their father was not particularly anything. Just the average man. He was good to Renji and Hiroshi.

Renji was generous. And tidy. He always kept his space - their space - like a little haven. Books lined the walls. At one corner was a beautiful wooden desk Renji had salvaged and restored. Right next to that, their futons, pushed together so that they would fit.

Sometimes when Hiroshi woke up in the middle of the night, Renji would be lying on his front, or sitting at the desk, writing. Renji was always either writing or reading. Hiroshi had asked once what it was that he was writing down, but Renji just smiled and said it wasn't important.

One day, when Renji was out on errands, Hiroshi read one of the many note books. It was filled with carefully, almost lovingly, written words about everything and anything at all. What he'd read in a book, an opinion, random thoughts that had crossed his mind. Sometimes he wrote about Hiroshi.

_I want to get him out of this place._

Hiroshi didn't know if Renji wrote that in a positive or negative sense.

A year after that, Renji made him sit through a series of academic tests. Hiroshi had no idea how he arranged them, or where the money for all the new clothes, stationery and essentials, the new glasses, the everything in his suitcase, came from when it turned out he had passed a gifted child test and got accepted by a foreign university. Renji got him a passport, too, after asking what he would like as a new name.

Hiroshi knew the best way to thank his brother was to quietly accept all that had been done for him. He chose to call himself Yagyuu, because Renji had chosen Yanagi.

Yagyuu closed the door behind him and walked up to the desk. Yanagi was asleep, arms folded to pillow his head, a pen held loosely in his right hand. Under his arms was yet another note book he had been writing in. Memoirs. Not for anyone but for himself, in case one day he forgot. Yanagi was deathly afraid of forgetting; Yagyuu had found out from their father that Yanagi's mother had been ill and sometimes forgot about everything. Renji developed the habit of recording his life, because of that.

A hand brushed Yanagi's hair. Yanagi's eyelashes trembled, but he didn't wake up. But that was okay, there were still hours before the scheduled dinner with their father and Yanagi's mother. Yanagi had arranged it; he was the type to keep the ties, always. He would not forget.

Yagyuu took the five note books he brought with him, found the key to Yanagi's cupboard - he still liked to keep his key in a fake compartment in the desk drawer - and put the note books together with Yanagi's.

Compared with his brother, Yagyuu didn't write nearly as much, just one book a year. But at least he could share with Yanagi some of the life he had given him.

* * *

Niou knocked a few times before poking his head around the door. He heard that Yanagi was in, but if the guy was busy, Niou didn't want to take a nap right in front of the one person who really needed the rest.

But it didn't matter anyway, he found out. Yagyuu had taken over the couch that he normally slept in, and Yanagi was asleep at the desk.

Niou dipped his head, smiled, and closed the door.

* * *

-end-

* * *


End file.
